“A temple in Srinagar razed to ruins, only pillars stand like his pale face, in my memory. I must come back to autumn trees to write on chinars our forgotten history; on the graves of my friends, who coffins I shouldered, I must return to write poetry.” This is the famous poetry written by Aamir Wani which describes the pain and also the beauty of Kashmir.
Kashmir, the most debatable topic in the sub-continent but now things are not the same after the revocation of Article 370. Still many have doughts that the heaven of earth is safe or not for the tourists? Recently, I visited Kashmir for the first time when there was snow all over the roads, shops, and houses. It was like a paradise in Northern India.
To be very honest when I made up my mind to go there I too have doughts about whether it’s safe to travel there or not and that too in the times of the COVID pandemic, but the day I stepped into the land of heaven my thinking changed, completely changed. I have too many backlogs not to travel there as I was also on my path alone but I always believed that a person’s safety is in their own hands. It’s propelled by our own decisions and action that what we want and what not if we want to be safe at a place.
I am not writing this article to declare that Kashmir is safe or not but it’s all about my own experience what I felt and what not.
Is life back to normal after Article 370 revocation?
Keeping in mind that the internet connections and gathering were banned in the Union Territory for months since the revocation of Article 370, then yes in the initial phase the situation was complicated but now the internet services have been restored in the Union Territory. I spoke to few people in the valley and they shared only the positive response for the better situation over there.
But the first thing that we have to notice after arriving not only in Kashmir but any part of the country that we will make our daily needs or not? And this was my major concern when I first planned to visit the valley.
When I reached Srinagar, which is the most developed city in the valley, I never found any difficulty in hunting for daily needs. It was like a normal town with its own beauty. But later the second half of my trip which was the challenging one as it includes traveling across by road was difficult. You cannot afford or risk to travel by road after 4 PM in the valley as I heard by the locals and yes that was true I experienced the same. It took me 2 days to rome across 4 districts in the valley but to be very honest, there is no monster lurking in the dark, ready to pounce upon and kill you in the valley.
